Sorry for disappearing over the summer folks. I’ve had to use my summer break from school to prepare for my big move across the country to Boston in January. The good news is that I’ve taken plenty of notes on content trends and will have exciting new tips by next week.
Thanks for staying tuned!
Sometimes even well-written works have typos, and when they occur, they can be highly amusing. To prove my point, I’ve highlighted a blooper my partner found when we researched fried chicken recipes:
Once the desired temperature of the oil is achieved, lower the heat of the stove. Using a thong, carefully dip the chicken pieces into the pot. Fry the chicken in batches so as not to overcrowd the pot.
This essentially tells the reader to put the chicken in thong underwear or swimwear and lower it into the pot. What an image! And what a great way to illustrate a few simple steps that can help avoid embarrassing typos.
1. Visualize your words — Come up with a mental image of your sentences, and think literally. If you used the wrong word, your mental image will be far different from your intent (e.g., You just instructed someone to use thong underwear to make fried chicken).
2. Watch for number — Generally you would use tongs to handle food, not just one tong. Always make sure the quantity of your nouns can carry out what they’re supposed to do in the sentence.
3. Double-check infrequently used words — Not many of us need to write about tongs on a daily basis. As you go through your sentences, circle words you don’t use often and check their spelling in the dictionary. Be careful about relying on a spell-checker. Infrequently used words might not be in the spell-checker dictionary, and you may be directed to replace your word with a wrong one.
These simple steps can help reduce the number of typos in your work and increase the trust readers place on your ability to share reliable information.
Zen Habits is a wonderful blog about productivity and living a richer life, and their traffic numbers rank consistently in the Top 100. Ironically, the blog’s content frequently suffers from a major problem: wordiness.
The most egregious example was from a guest writer who wrote the post “The Biggest Waste of Time.”
Let me walk you through my troubleshooting process, and at the end, I will show you how this valuable 900-word post could have been rewritten to be clearer and with a more powerful message. [Note: Zen Habit's wild uncopyright license allows me to recreate the entire post for my own purposes on this blog.]
Problem 1: Headline overshoots content
“The Biggest Waste of Time” could refer to any inefficiency. The post is about managing the struggle between saying “Yes” and “No.” A search engine user looking for advice about indecision will have an impossible time pulling up this post in the search results.
A headline that better serves the nature of the content could read: “Making Yes or No Decisions Efficently.”
Problem 2: Radio announcer style writing
Radio announcers tend to pull in listeners with repetition and a call to action. For instance, a radio announcer says, “Tom sees the shiny new red car in the window. Tom really wants that red car. Don’t you want to be in that red car, Tom?”
Readers on the other hand just need to know Tom looked at a red car; they expect to read what he does next. They didn’t forget the car is red, while a radio listener could plausibly miss the detail on first mention. Read the rest of this entry »
Here on the web, people either want to be informed or entertained, and so we each utilize our own way of sifting through vast amount of great and (lots more!) not-so-great content available for free.
These filtering methods may change depending on how busy or bored one is, but there’s always one question at the forefront of an internet reader’s mind: How does this affect me?
You may think it obvious to address this question in the first few lines of a blog post or promotional copy, but there is astonishing amount of “Me. Me me me. [New paragraph]. Me me me me me…” in online content.
Anecdotal content may have the great intention of sharing a valuable life lesson, but many readers will likely roll their eyes and move on to the next site that is less self-centered.
Tip: Draw in readers with an abstract Do you remember looking for research papers in college? Headlines and paper titles loaded with jargon and nonsensical phrases were hardly any help. Often you chose sources based on the summary of findings discussed in the abstract of a paper. Read the rest of this entry »
All the info you need for making good content even better, or simply making it good in the first place.
To send tips or submit material you think needs improvement, please email me at:
john@johnmontey.com
I will diagnose potential problems with submitted content and share my edits on this blog.
